This is one of those famous stories from my family's history that I've told so many times, that I can't believe that it's not in this blog, somewhere. But, I just did a search and it came up empty, so I better get this down as quickly as I can. Otherwise I might forget it and lose the story again.My grandmother (my dad's mother) grew up on a farm in the hills of Kentucky. She's nearly 70 now, so that means, that she grew up in the thirties and fourties. Back then, there was no mass media for kids to consume like we do. Sure, her family had a radio and a local boy would deliver the newspaper, but there was no tv, no internet, no video games, no dvds. None of the distractions that really serve to plump up the modern kid.
So, she worked the family farm, feeding the animals and loading grain and carrying big, heavy buckets of milk into the house for cooling and use. She was always a pretty gal, from what I hear. She had flaming red hair, which she pulled back into a simple pony-tail. She bulked up quickly and got very strong and was an athletic girl, through and through.
When she turned eighteen, she did what any other girl would do, she moved away to live on her own. She packed a suitcase and got a job as a secretary in the hustling and bustling city of Fort Knox, Ky. She lived in an apartment building with a bunch of other girls. Which seemed to work out all right. She told me that the other girls were always going out and dating men and were constantly fighting to be the most attractive girl in the building. Being a farm girl, she thought that was all a buncha hoo-haw and settled into a happy life there.
She was walking back from the grocery store one night, when she passed by a local bar that was advertising a night of "Amateur Ladies Wrestling Night". Any lady who walked into the bar, could wrestle the Professional Lady Wrestlers and if they beat the professional, the lady would win $25. Which was a fair amount, for the late 1940's. My grandmother took her bag of groceries into the bar and watched a match or two, trying to decide if she was going to get involved or not.
She saw the ladies that volunteered for the match were no match for the big, burly women of the professional wrestling circuit. They'd enter the makeshift, portable ring and there would be some grappling and clawing and then WHAM, the professional would pin the amateur and the match would be over. My grandmother, the fierce farm girl that she was, thought she might have a better chance at it. She walked over to the announcers and asked to have her name put on the list. She said that the announcer looked her over, saw her size and said, "I believe we're gonna have ourselves a match, here!"
When the announcer called my grandmother to the ring, she bravely climbed through the ropes wearing her coveralls and her big, men's shoes. She had already rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt. She didn't want to give the professional wrestler anything to grab ahold of. She said that the gal in the ring was a beefy, platinum blonde, wearing a pink leotard outfit. She took a look at my grandmother and appeared to think, "Oh boy, here we go."
The announcer began the match. The bell was rung and my grandmother, naive to the subtle performance techniques of amateur wrestling, ran immediately across the ring and laid hands on that poor, startled blonde. No preface. No circling, just a beeline with bloody murder as the intent. She grabbed the pro by the shoulders and began bending and twisting that poor gal in a serious of moves that had worked succesfully on the farm, to topple a pregnant cow. In no time flat, the blonde was pinned, wincing from the strain of the pin. The bells rang again and the announcer ran into the ring and announced my grandmother as the winner. She thought he was making a move on her and shoved him away, ready to leave the ring and collect her $25.
At the bar, the bartender said that she'd have to wait until the featured matches were over to collect her cash from the wrestling circuit owner. But he was impressed by how she took down the blonde, so he let her drink beer, on the house. Men from all over the bar came up to shake her hand and laugh about how she'd beaten her opponent. Lots of questions about whether she had a boyfriend or not. And if so, how big was
HE?
When the featured matches ended, the owner of the wrestling match came over to meet my grandmother. He asked to feel her flex her muscles and she showed him how strong her arms. She agreed, happy to impress a fan. He offered to make her a star on the circuit, right then and there. She would wrestle in local matches only, against the opponents that he supplied and she could win or lose, depending on what she felt like doing on a given night. He offered her the impressive fee of $50 a match, win or lose. She accepted.
He suggested that she wear something "a little more girly next time" and she told him to "go to hell." Before he left, he named her wrestling persona. Her given name was Margaret. He named her "Mad Margaret". He paid her the $25 and gave her a $25 bonus and told her to meet him on Saturday night at the local fairgrounds for her first professional match.
And that's what she did for that summer. By day she was the World's Worst Secretary. At night, she wrestled other women for money. She got to know the other girls in the league. Turns out most of them had met the owner in much the same way. A few of them were burlesque dancers too, moonlighting between gigs. They became more her friends than the girls that she lived with.
And she was good at it too. She never bothered to develop a "stage persona" or a "routine". She would show up, roll up her sleeves and rush into the ring to lay hands on some poor woman. When she was done, she'd quietly leave, not even bothering to wave at the men who hooted and hollered to get her attention. And if a guy got "grabby" with her on her way out, she punch him in the face and that would pretty much end any unwanted attention for her.
At the end of the summer, though, she had an urge to move to a large town than Fort Knox. She set her eye on Louisville, Ky. She quit her job, moved out of her apartment and moved to downtown Louisville, where she got a job, working in a shoe factory. She made shoes. Later, she became a registered nurse.
Of course, all of this happened thirty years before I was even born. She moved back to her family's farm, outside of Fort Knox, met my grandfather Lawrence (a big, hulking, bald man that everyone called "Boots"), had my dad and his two sisters, before she divorced Boots. She re-married three or four more times, twice to one guy. But each marriage would end badly. She picked men who had tempers and sooner or later it would end with them beating the snot out of each other. The marriages ended badly.
When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with that grandmother. We would watch movies together and order pizza in and she would fall asleep on the couch, but I would stay up, watching whatever movie was on. For money, she ran an illegal, private nursing home in her house. She "kept" old women, often for half of what a nursing home would charge. I spent happy summer days in a house full of old women with varying degrees of dementia. But they all liked me and I was well loved by these old women.
And if I saw my grandmother effortlessly bend down and pick up one of these frail women and carry them down the hallway for a bath or a nap, it never ocurred to me how expertly she tucked and picked up these women and moved them around. Almost like she'd had a career once, lifting and carrying other women around, for a sporting event, over forty year ago.
"Mad Margaret", at Christmas, 2006.
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